the only difference between wine and brandy (made from grapes) is the amount of alcohol and the wood aging (which gives a great flavor) so I would say brandy with the alcohol burned off-no problem! remember cherries jubilee? oh my! cherries cooked with sugar and served flaming with brandy (then poured over ice cream) ...we don't need to know this! (and, no, I don't have recipe!)

well the sugars are turned to alcohol, except in the case of liqueors, (you know, the sweet ones) but alcohol is a relative of sugar.....something I don't understand...because Atkins said that it is not metabolized the same way as sugar, and you could drink it on his diet......hmmm, wonder if anyone actually knows how it is different from sugar?(and of course alcohol is another kind of liability, but if one usues wisely?)

Now cognac and that kind of stuff is really NOT something I use a lot... mainly around Xmas... and I really think that for a healthy person it wont make a differece to use a tiny bit of theese lovely golden drops

Lloyd..I get you! Probably so....like in caramelization? It is sad but probably true, and I love a good bourbon or rye, but really I don't drink them for this reason....best deal would be eau de vie, grappa (theres a subtle diff there) vodka, gin, and white rum. Slivovitz is eau de vie made from plum, etc.....I drink less and less as the years roll by, but I remember a good drink.

Lloyd..I get you! Probably so....like in caramelization? It is sad but probably true, and I love a good bourbon or rye, but really I don't drink them for this reason....best deal would be eau de vie, grappa (theres a subtle diff there) vodka, gin, and white rum. Slivovitz is eau de vie made from plum, etc.....I drink less and less as the years roll by, but I remember a good drink.

The wood is speculative, as I said previously. Modern brandy is usually colored with caramel rather than actually aged, there is a small amount of AGE's there.

I'm guessing some/most/all of what makes red wine okay for O's may get left behind in the distillation process as the major factor. There are other things at play as well. It's a bit too complex for me to assume I know what criteria Dr D was using and I'm not going to research it further at this point in time.

The lesson (if there is one) might be to sometimes ask why a food is good, instead of asking if a food is not bad. Much of what Dr D is doing centers around what makes something beneficial. Red wine has attributes that are beneficial enough to counter the other negative effects that other wines and spirits have.

LloydI asked DH and he allowed as the good stuff in red wine may be lost but it is not possible to know for sure, as it is either dissolved in the high or low alcohols, and some of these are "cut" in distilling, so it cannot be known what is lost or remains....(a bit arcane, but inquiring minds want to know)....ahhh, well, then.